Commercial and residential waste service providers perform periodic waste audits as an added benefit for particular customers. The waste audit is an analysis of the customer's waste that is removed from a particular location on a periodic basis. The analysis may indicate the different types of materials in the customer's waste. For example, the analysis may indicate an amount (e.g., percent, weight, volume, etc.) of the waste that is recyclable. In some instances, the analysis may also provide a value of the recyclable waste and/or a recommendation for reducing, reusing, and/or selling portions of the waste in order for the customer to recoup a portion of the waste service cost.
Historically, a waste service audit was performed manually on a rather limited basis. In particular, a waste service representative (and/or the customer) would observe the waste being dumped from a receptacle into a service vehicle and/or sift through waste inside the receptacle. The representative would then record information about the observed waste. For example, as a dumpster was lifted by a service vehicle and dumped into a bed of the vehicle, the representative would be on site to see the falling waste materials and record the materials as being cardboard, plastic, glass, biodegradable, or other. An analysis would then be performed based on the observations, and corresponding recommendations regarding recycling would be made.
Although acceptable for some applications, the manual on-site waste service audits may be less than optimal. In particular, these waste service audits can be difficult, time-consuming, inaccurate, and potentially hazardous to the waste service representative. In addition, because of the difficulty and amount of time required for the manual on-site waste audits, the waste audits may not be completed frequently. As a result, the accuracy of the analysis and/or the benefit of the recommendation may be lower than desired for some applications.
The disclosed system is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.